back on the grid

Finally got reconnected today!!  Though almost didn’t happen, as Time Warner, for whatever reason, still had my old phone # on my account (even though I asked 2 weeks ago for it to be changed) and the technician called that number and when there was no answer decided “ok, guess i don’t have to show up”  Or so I found out when I called TWC with 10 minutes to go in the scheduled time window and needless to say I gave them a piece of my mind.  Whatever, it got hooked up…2 days without TV was tolerable (though I am glad to have it back in time to watch Nadal’s first round match!) but I’m glad to have functioning Internet without having to look for an unsecured wireless network to connect to!

Anyways, even though I do still have some unpacking to do, I am definitely getting settled into the new pad, and let me just tell you…compared to my old place, I feel like I’m living in a palace now.  What a difference one extra room makes-not to mention a much bigger kitchen!  This is definitely worth not being within stumbling distance of Central Park 🙂  Funny thing-both my old super and old across-the-hall neighbor both commented to me that I “won’t be right by the park anymore”  Hmmm guess I’ve been spotted a lot in my running clothes. 🙂

And thankfully the running routine wasn’t too disrupted with the move.  Saturday I got 20 miles in during the LTR…I’m not gonna go into too much detail except same shite, different day.  I’m on pace, others aren’t, guess who has to deal with the consequences.  As I had to do some pre-move stuff that afternoon, I wore my compression socks all afternoon to hopefully aid with recovery (and I did on the actual moving day too!)  Sunday was my last run being within stumbling distance from the park and was a slow 4 and change on the bridle path, before finishing up packing and waiting for the movers (who were actually early!)  The move thankfully went smoothly, now it’s just a matter of finding a place for everything (especially my clothes-and this was with tossing quite a bit before the move too!)

Today was tempo nite with UA, and I decided to test the waters with regards to how far it is to run from here to there…about 2.8 miles.  Good to know if I need to pad my mileage, but I may need to think of other alternatives on speedwork days.  Anyway, tonite was 2 tempo Harlem Hill loops (1.4 miles)  Though we were told we can have some leeway with the suggested times due to the conditions…anyways, my suggested time was 10:38 and I ran 10:45 (7:38 pace) for the 1st loop and surprise surprise, 10:38 (7:33 pace) for the second!!  I definitely earned my recovery brew…

If you like fruity beers, this is strongly recommended. And check out what I used to drink it in! 🙂

Anyway, back to work, back to reality tomorrow. Thankfully the commute will be a little shorter than it was before! 🙂

two steps forward, one step back

It never fails, right?  When you’re packing up for a move and you feel like you’re making progress, you come across something you didn’t even remember that you had, and of course you have to pause and check everything out…and play the keep/toss game.

So what were these blasts from the past that came up while I was in the midst of throwing stuff into boxes last nite?  (well not really “throwing stuff” but u know what I mean.)  Can you believe it, old apartment documents from my first place in Murray Hill-we’re talking 9 years ago.  Including back-and-forth emails between me and my then soon-to-be roommate all excited about moving in and what we were gonna do with the place…and also not knowing how much things were gonna change in only a matter of weeks.

And sorta on that topic, I also came across previous years’ versions of the Zagat restaurant/bar guides…as well as a coupla Time Out New York versions too.  From as far back as 2000!  Why did I keep them all this time?  Nostalgia sake, I guess…reading about past favorite haunts of mine that are no longer around…and also the pre-9/11 places too…

And of course, pictures.  We’re talking actual hardcopy photos, back in the day when they had those things called 35mm disposable cameras and every single place that developed them would give you free doubles.  And yeah, of course I had to wade through them too.  Some warranted a trip to the trash can, others brought back good memories, others brought back bad, others I was just indifferent to.

So yeah, I’m not sure what’s gonna be tougher this week, packing up the rest of my place (I haven’t even tackled my clothes closet yet!) or getting in all my mileage.  It’s gonna be tight, but it may be doable…I at least have a coupla fun things going on to break it up.  Thursday will be my last race as an Upper West Sider…a 5k race which you may remember last year wasn’t exactly 5K, but was still fun all the same 😉   And once again, I’m pretty much “training through it” so I don’t expect anything great.  Saturday is the next Long Training run and another 20…yep dontcha just love how I scheduled my move around my training and long runs? 😉  Though moving the day after running a 20 will be…uh…interesting!  Though I will be taking it easy in the LTR.

And last week’s long run?  16 miles down Summer Streets to the end, a little bit up, over to the east, around the bottom, up the west side.  Yeah I know I was annoyed by it last week but this was the last weekend so I could deal for one more day…one less long run I have to do in the park.  And I was actually able to sneak three MP miles in near the end-8:10, 8:22, 8:10 (that 2nd one could have been faster-I had to slow a little by chelsea piers…people crowding the sidewalks.)  So not bad, especially considering my legs sorta fell asleep around mile 11…guess the PowerGel boost woke them up.  This weekend, I’m keeping the pace consistent, as the LTR is not the place to take off in the last few miles.  (And I think my legs will be happier for it.)

 And on the topic of gel boosts (love how each paragraph of this post seems to transition into the next)-anyone else disappointed that Luna Moons were discontinued (which was I guess the LunaBar version of Clif Blok Shots)?  While I usually use gels for a long run and during the race, the Blueberry Luna Moons were my pre-race “go-to.”  Just like running shoes for me I guess…always getting discontinued 🙂

Wow, a lot for one post.  I guess that’s what happens when you have to spend more time prepping for a move than blogging 🙂

necessary evils

…a V02 max workout of 5 x 1000m on tired marathon-training legs…

Time	Distance	Pace
4:22	0.61	7:08
4:18	0.62	6:58
4:18	0.62	6:55
4:18	0.61	7:00
4:14	0.62	6:52

This was actually a “not as bad as it sounds” workouts.  I mean, this isn’t supposed to be easy!  But by the 3rd 1000, I was feeling all the miles in my legs, and it was all I could do to maintain and not slow down (for what its worth, the loop for each repeat was the same, don’t know what was up with Mr. Garmin!  And even though the temps had dropped, the humidity was up there, so I chucked my singlet and ran the last 2 intervals topless (well but of course I had a sports bra on…so not totally shirtless?) and that seemed to help.

…staying in on a beautiful Friday night in order to make some headway with cleaning house.  I move in a little over 2 weeks and feel like I’ll never be ready on time…

…running 18 20 miles sometime this weekend.  gotta stay on track with the Chi-town training, so to say…

make my move

Well as I hinted about in my previous post…there just may be good news on the apartment front…but didn’t want to say anything til it was official.

Well as of this morning, it’s official.  At the end of this month, I will no longer be an Upper West Sider…but a Midtowner!!  (west, of course…you all know the west side is the best side!)  Yeah even though I did like the UWS and the proximity to the park, I saw a place in the West 40s that I really liked and didn’t want to waste any time in putting in an app…didn’t want to lose this one like I lost the place on west 91st!

I’ll admit, I am a little sad to be leaving the UWS…but I’m really getting excited about my new ‘hood.  Bars and restaurants galore (ohh boy once I’m done with Chicago and not on the wagon…) and really I’m not *that* far from CP.  Less than a mile to Columbus Circle, and hey not a bad way to pad mileage, right?  Plus I’m still near the West Side Hwy.  And near almost every single subway (well the west side ones at least)-including EXPRESS trains!!  And within walking distance of Bryant Park.  And…oh I’m sure I can go on and on but I’ll stop here.  And I gotta love this-the landlords are a family-owned company from the town next to where I grow up, and one of them is friends with one of my brother’s friends…small world, right?  But besides that, they just seem genuinely nice and helpful-huge difference from my current and previous place.

So now that I got that out of the way, the real tough and tedious part begins…packing and moving.  (I have a feeling I will be doing a LOT of cleaning house…I’m sure I accumulated so much stuff over 7 years that I probably don’t even need anymore.)  But I’me sorta arranging my moving date so that it doesn’t interfere with training, especially my long runs…ya know, because I can 🙂  And since I know I will be situated before Labor Day weekend, I went ahead and registered for the New Haven 20K!  (and I will be so close to Grand Central-score!)

So hopefully having this little piece of stress taken care of will help me have a good race tomorrow?  Hope so…and I’m sure I’ll see a lot of you there! 🙂

ch-ch-changes

Yeah, I’ve been sorta MIA on the WWW for the last few days.  Why you ask?  Well I haven’t had computer access since Friday-except at the office, and that little thing called work has kept me too busy to blog and/or comment on blogs.  Hell, even with the CrackBerry, I’ve found it hard to keep up with things on Facebook…I’m sure I’m behind in my birthday greetings and other congrats.

Drama, you ask?  Well maybe.  Something that happened in the last few days (not going into it here-if you know me “off the blog” you can ask) has spearheaded an unexpected upcoming change-an apartment move.  Even though I love my neighborhood, it’s definitely time to move on from my apartment at the very least, for several reasons.  Though if I can find another place on the UWS, I wouldn’t cry or anything 🙂  So this is gonna be something to keep me quite busy for the next month or 2.  Here’s hoping it is a little easier and less stressful than when I was looking 7 years ago at this time…

As for running/Chi-town training…it’s still happening.  Not feeling too confident though.  My original plan for my long run this weekend was to do 10 miles before the NYRR Dash and Splash 10K (which I did actually sign up for to get pool access afterwards…plus its just the right thing to do) but due to a certain turn of events, a long run Saturday just wasn’t happening (though a short one did.)  I did get my 16 in on Sunday…but it was a struggle.  Was partially my fault for not getting out the door until 10 am, even though I had the alarm set.  But even with gels, gatorade, water (i did have my fuel belt on) I didn’t feel strong at all.  Starting with mile 9, I almost wanted to call it quits every mile, and my last few miles were over 10 minutes each so I was really hurting 😦   Was just a bad run-so bad that I was seriously considering adjusting my goals for Chicago.

And hopefully tonite’s 5K action will still go on as planned.  Whether it rains or not, I’m still running.  But knowing how flooded Hoboken streets get, methinks there may be a course “modification” or 2.  That’s ok…nothing wrong with running another short “5K” … 😛

why do these things happen to me?

so yesterday evening, i indulged in a speed workout (6 reps of this steep-ass hill. boy, my a$$ was definitely feeling those uphills…)

and after said speed workout, me and a few others decided to meet for dinner afterwards-so i detoured home to clean up and dry off (was a little rainy before.) so i was about to leave my apartment…when I couldn’t find my keys. Uh-oh…I had a sinking feeling I knew what I did, because yes, I had done that once before.

I friggin left my keys in my apartment front door. Which pretty much locked myself in my apartment.

Guess that workout left me more than a little scatterbrained?

Last time it happened-my across the hall neighbor was able to unlock me, but I was not sure if he was home this time. Thankfully, I called one of the cool peeps I was meeting and he was able to come over and bail me out of trouble 🙂

Dinner was good, and then…afterwards someone noticed someone’s metrocard/money on the floor…yep you guessed it, it was mine, fell out of my pocket.

I swear, i would have lost my brain yesterday if it was not attached.

Thank god both me and my keys made it inside my apartment without incident after that. 🙂

almost perfect

10 miles in the park this afternoon…almost the perfect run. Don’t know if it was the new shoes, the cross-training and lifting I’ve been doing lately giving my legs a little more strength, or just the nice weather, but the legs felt great and I still felt like I could keep going after 10!!

What stopped me? Damn allergy season…yeah. Those cherry blossom trees on the bridle path are pretty to look at, but they are just bad for me right now. I’m going to the Yankee game tomorrow…and just pray that don’t have to make an early exit like I wanted to last year.

Off to celebrate Cinco de Mayo for the 2nd time in the last 3 days in a little bit.

And I got my lease for next year in the mail, and the landlord is giving a sneaky rent increase. You can bet I am not having that. Stay tuned.

five years.

Five years ago yesterday (9/1)…a 20-something year old girl packed up the majority of her room in her parents’ house in suburban NJ, and with the help of several people, moved it into a 4th-floor walk-up apartment on East 33rd St and 3rd Avenue.

Oh I remember all too well how excited I was about this…Murray Hill was at the top of my list of neighborhoods, and that I found a place there the first day looking? I didn’t care that it wasn’t in a fancy building-it’s all about location!! And the girl I was moving in with seemed like a nice, fun girl as well-this was her first place in the city too. (yeah, i know it took me awhile to escape the shackles of my parents’ place. I had a car to pay off for 3 years. and also…oops, involves the Ex, I’m not going there…)

The actual moving day…well we found out that the landlord totally overpromised a 9/1 move-in date…as renovations in the building weren’t complete yet. I think our place was better off than some other apartments in the building. I remember moving day was a hot day (apparently some building residents remembered me running around in a sports bra while trekking up and down the stairs…lol) but once the bulk of it was done, my roomie and I hit the 3rd Ave bars and had a fun nite.

But, as I’m sure you could tell from the move-in date…though we wouldn’t have known it at the time, our move-in date was poorly timed. I think my roommate took it harder than I did-then again she was closer to downtown when it happened. Anyways, the next 2 years consisted of a coupla roommate changes (the 1st one wound up buying a studio before the lease was up, so I had a subletter for the remainder of the year, but found a new one for the next year), a job change, some money issues, some male heartbreak, other crap, and I dunno, just a feeling, that I wasn’t sure that I could ever truly make this city my home.

In the summer of ’03, my roommate told me that she would be getting free housing from her grad school and that she’d be moving out. And as I didn’t want to deal with the search for another roommate-I decided to peruse the Craigslist ads and take a chance at finding a studio apartment. I thought Murray Hill was a great neighborhood and I would have loved to have stayed there, but I had a feeling I was going to have to move uptown-be it east side or west side.

The first apartment I saw was on the UWS in the 70s-and was very small…little too small for comfort…I said “next.” Then one Friday night after a long workweek, I didn’t really feel like going out, and that turned out to be a great decision…I browsed the ads, and saw an ad for an affordable brownstone studio in the west 80s, a block from Central Park, with a 9/1 move-in date. I wasted no time in sending an email, and apparently I was the first to respond-so I was the first to see the place. I saw it the next morning and knew it was my place. I had an application in on Monday, confirmation that the apartment was mine on Tuesday, and moved in at the very end of August.

In a way, I think that move was a turning point of sorts. If I hadn’t moved uptown, I may not have taken up running like I did (thanks to my proximity to Central Park), may not have gotten inspired to run the marathon someday, might not have joined the Flyers…and so on. While there is one thing in my life that still needs major fixing (those of you who know me “off the blog” know what that is)…outside of that, I think things are much better 50 blocks north.

And into my 4th year in my cozy studio and as long as I can still afford the rent, I ain’t moving!! I wouldn’t give up a place within stumbling distance of the park if I didn’t have to 🙂

now playing: “deja vu” ~ beyonce/jay-z

the things you can do with tie racks…

I decided my whole mishmash of hardware was looking kinda disorganized…no before picture, but here’s the after!

I had seen this idea on one of the running forums…so a quick trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond, and voila!! But man…for someone who has never run a marathon, I’ve really accumulated a lot in the last 2 years!!

• Finishers medals from the Mini 10K (2004, 2005, 2006)
• Finishers medals from the Poland Spring Marathon Kickoff 5-miler (2004, 2005)
• Finisher medal from the 2005 Nike Run Hit Wonder 5M
• Finisher medal from a turkey trot I did on Long Island in 2004
• Finisher medal from the 2005 Vegas Half
• 6 team award medals from various NYRR races
• my “Rookie of the Year” medal from the Flyers awards gala in 2005
• a 1st-place age-group medal from a 5K I did in NJ back in Sept. ’04
• a 2nd-place age-group trophy from a 5K I did in NJ back in Oct. ’04 (actually was 3rd in my age group…but the 1st place girl in my age group was the 1st overall female, so that moved me up)

So there will be a spot saved in the center for the marathon medal…or I may decide to do something a little more creative with that…we shall see…

What does everyone else do with their finishers medals/other hardware that gets accumulated over time?

now playing: “jump” ~ madonna

no rest for the weary

oy vey. it’s only hump day and i’m beat.

my weary legs are getting a little bit of a running break too. nothing but easy runs this week. decided to be smart and skip speed last nite in favor of an easy 5-mile loop, turned out to be the right decision since my legs didn’t feel up to pushing fast anyway. i did stop by engineer’s gate to say a quick hi to everyone and find out what i missed 🙂

seems like i never made up my lack of sleep from this weekend. after a too-short nap on Saturday, i set out for a little Flyer event with a twist. Our very creative social chair decided to think “outside the box” a little and set up a pottery painting event at Our Name Is Mud (or whatever it’s called now) in the west village. hey, I needed a mother’s day gift for my mom (it’s too hard these days to think of what to get for the mother who has everything) so hey why not. and we got to guzzle some red wine while doing so (and there were some who accidentally put their paintbrushes in the wine cup and yes, I was that person.) after that was over, we headed to a nearby bar/restaurant for food and drinks-including a coupla bottles of champagne, courtesy of a nice Brit in town for the weekend who wanted a running team to spend a Saturday nite with (and who had no prob using the expense account as well! very nice.)

then on Sunday, as I liveblogged, I went to the Yanks game-my brother has season tix for all the Sunday games this year. Not bad seats, tier reserve, 1st base side. Nice win over Toronto…only thing that marred the game for me was me getting probably the worst allergy attack I’ve had in years-all the Claritin in the world couldn’t help me. i was in misery through the game and after the game when we went back to NJ for a belated b-day dinner for my mom.

but nevertheless, a very good weekend…and has seemed to be the case lately after good weekends, monday morning is a bit of a letdown.

this week at work has been quite hectic so far, and looks like a taste of things to come, as starting next week we are gonna be down 1 man. i’d be lying if i said i wasn’t apprehensive about what the next couple of months are gonna bring…man, is it too much to ask that i can have at least 1 summer where i’m not consumed with work and can just kick back and enjoy…?

only good news i’ve gotten this week is that my rent will have a very minimal increase next year…meaning that the UWS is stuck with me for another year 🙂 as long as i can afford the rent on my current place, i ain’t moving…i wouldn’t give up a place within stumbling distance from central park if I didn’t have to 🙂

3 days down, 2 to go…

now playing: “say i” ~ christina milian

assorted hump day thoughts

yep, another Wednesday, another hump day (ya know…Wednesday, the middle of the week, is the “hump” of the week.) Anyway, i’m borrowing the style of this post from a recent post of Derek’s. I feel like being sorta random today.

• Rosa Mexicano had very good food/drink, but overpriced…the kinda place where you go to more for the “ambiance” than anything else. I had 2 of their pomagranate margaritas and honestly…I’ve had better margaritas, cheaper too. Also, that was the place I was referring to in this post (the restaurant that replaced an old happy hour haunt.)
• Accidentally eating part of an über-hot pepper-not good. Downing a whole glass of water didn’t work. Apparently sucking on a lime neutralizes it. You learn something new every day. Also, in a rare moment, a colleague that is notorious for being obnoxious and having a sorta “brother-sister” relationship with me was actually nice for a change and helped me out. I’m never gonna let him forget that :-p
• I love Flickr’s “liveblogging” feature. Pretty cool to do a blog post “on the fly.” tried it out last nite and it worked like a charm…
• My ConEd bill is the lowest it’s been in a very very long time. Guess the work that had to be done to my place was worth it.
• Why can’t I be more consistent with my running. I never know if it’s gonna be a good day or bad day. Monday’s run was absolutely atrocious, god bless jbl for keeping me company. This evening’s run was a total 180 from that. I go to such extremes. I still really like the Brooks though.
• Why do guys give all the signs that they are interested and ask for your number when they never have any intention of using it?
• The Bachelor keeps up its track record…did this surprise anyone at all? I say they should bring back Trish for a season of The Bachelorette to boost ratings (anyone remember her antics on Jesse Palmer’s season?)

now playing: “i begin to wonder” ~ dannii minogue

it’s oh so quiet

typical for the week between xmas and new year’s right? the office is a ghost town. so…what better way to take advantage of it with a 2-hour lunch? even better when the waiters know us and they slip us a complimentary glass of port. even better when it’s expensed too 🙂

so right now, i’m utlizing my hanukkah present, which is in the piccy to the right…how cute is this thing? 😀 i am actually wearing the white headphones right now…not overly comfortable though. got a pretty cool case to go with it…will come in very handy when running.

saw la familia on sunday and yesterday…”celebrated” hanukkah with both homemade latkes and chinese food…and everyone was very happy with their presents…

was not too happy to come back to my place last nite and see part of the wall torn out…yeah, there’s work being done in my apartment and the place is a disaster area (but still somewhat liveable) but hopefully when all is said and done, i won’t have the same issue with lack of heat that i’ve had the last 2 winters, and my ConEd bills will go back to normal (you know there’s a problem when i’m paying twice as much during heating season than during A/C season-especially with this summer’s record heat! heat is supposed to be included in my lease.)

i need to get back to some sort of routine…ever since last week, i have not been able to fall asleep til after 2 am (damn transit strike coverage,) and waking up around noon (or if i’m getting up early for work or something, it ain’t a pretty sight!) don’t think any morning runs will be happening any time soon…at least not til after the new year…

now playing: “long way down” ~ goo goo dolls